Twelve Seconds
by Flyxit
Summary: The art of poisoneering lit a fire within me, a flame I thought I could control. But as is the way of fire, it scorched and burned me. And then it consumed everything in its path. OC
1. Fire

**Twelve Seconds  
{Fire}  
**

The first time I witnessed death, I was seven.

It had been during my first month of poison training, and my sensei had wanted to demonstrate the effects of potassium cyanide. He'd injected a syringe-full of the clear toxin into an already old and dying fox. We watched as it seized, froze, and died, all in a matter of minutes.

Potassium cyanide was the second fastest working poison in the world, my sensei had explained to me as the fox twitched possessedly on the ground. I watched with wide eyes as its muscles spasmed even after its death.

Sensei then went on to tell me of the only toxin faster than cyanide. The world's most infamous poison – the dreaded _Draxio Miyuri Toxin_.

Named for its inventor, Yurama Miyuri, DMT could stop a full grown man's heart in just under twelve seconds, a revolutionary feat. Its closest competitor, cyanide, took at least a minute to register. Once Draxio Miyuri entered the blood stream, there was no way of stopping it. Even if someone managed to concoct a cure, there was no way to administer it before the toxin took its victim.

DMT was the world's most feared poison, and not only because of its staggering death rate. Only one man knew how to make it – Miyuri himself. He safeguarded the poison, revealing its makings to no one until his death, when he passed it on solely to his son.

It was then, after hearing of Yurama Miyuri's deadly talent, that I became enthralled with the art of poisoneering. Poisons fascinated me. The idea that a life could be ended to quickly, so detachedly, sent my mind whirring. The notion that a simple compound, carefully mapped and painstakingly mixed, could stop a man's heart in such a short amount of time changed the way I viewed the entire world around me.

Draxio Miyuri, the twelve second killer, ignited a fire within me that wouldn't be stopped. And I fed that fire, I nurtured it, let it breathe and grow. I thought that the fire would help me, thought it would lead me to the greatness I so coveted. I thought I could control that flame.

But as is the way of fire, it burned and scorched me. And then it consumed everything in its path.

* * *

_This story was formerly called "Black and White". I've decided to rewrite it and take it in a slightly different direction. _

_The first few chapters will be rather short, similar in length to this one. They'll basically just explain the backdrop of this whole story - important details that I need to get out of the way before the real story can begin.  
_

_Reviews are appreciated.  
_


	2. Secrets

**Twelve Seconds**

** {Secrets}**

My sensei also taught me of the history of the Yurama Clan.

They'd originally been a prominent clan in the Village Hidden in the Sand, and had been recognized even in their early generations as skilled poisoneers. But as a new clan they had been amateurs, careless. Unaware of the importance of keeping certain information to themselves, they let their secrets escape them. The compound maps of countless Yurama toxins became too widely spread to be of any real use. Before long anyone could get their hands on the poisons – and their remedies. They became copiable and, with that, useless.

And so they learned. The Yurama learned from their mistakes, and built iron walls around their work. They learned to keep their poisons trade secrets and guarded them with their lives. From then on, they made certain that only one person would know how to make a Yurama poison – the inventor himself.

The clan left the Sand Village a few decades later after a conflict with the leadership there crippled their pride. They settled instead in Konohagakure, or the Village Hidden in the Leaves. Struggling through a shortage of effective ninja serving the village, Konoha was only too happy to oblige, especially when it was a powerful new clan that was to be established.

Even before Yurama Miyuri's time, the clan had developed a fearsome reputation. In addition to their inventions, they were known for their expertise in the casting of advanced genjutsu. They were also infamous for being distrusting recluses; they rarely left their high-walled compound, and even when they did they interacted with as few as possible. They trained their children within the clan compound: educated them in the way of poisons in addition to the standard ninja curriculum. And then, with the invention of Draxio Miyuri, they were hailed as one of the most powerful clans in existence.

A few months after making his first kill using what became his signature poison, Yurama Miyuri joined the ranks of the esteemed Head Council. A group of the highest-ranking officials of the clan, the Council was like a branch of royalty within the Yurama. They were the decision-makers, elected into the hall based on their talents, their reputations, and their accomplishments.

I was determined to become a member of the Council. Not only that, but I yearned to be the _greatest_ member. And inventing a poison that made Yurama Miyuri's toxin obsolete would surely guarantee me a spot.

But this was, of course, the dream of every Yurama. There was an ongoing battle between the ninja of my generation, a scramble to procure a poison that would put Draxio Miyuri to shame. We were all similarly built and wired, all of us aware the the greatest honor, the only _acceptable_ honor, was to be chosen for the Council.

But there were a few things that set me apart from the many other ninja working towards that goal: I was, by far, the one with the best chance. Having been recognized from an early age as a born prodigy, and with the eyes of every council member trained curiously on me, the odds were almost entirely in my favor. Being the student of one of the councilmen only further tilted the boards my way.

And so it was as if the pieces were already in place. Everything was set up for me, everything arranged. The course was laid out, and all I had to do was run it, complete it, conquer it.

It was then that it all burned down.


	3. Beginnings

**Twelve Seconds**

** {Beginnnings}**

My parents were not wealthy.

They were of average home, and they have average jobs. They were not particularly beautiful or graceful or charming. There were no events in their backgrounds that would make them stand out in a crowd. Before I came into the world, everything about Yurama Yiroshi and Yurama Taka was nothing more than average. Then, four years after they were married, they gave birth to an extraordinary child.

This was what my mother always told me, what she always whispered to me in the darkness while she sat by my bedside.

_Our extraordinary child_, she would say in soft, hushed tones. It was about the only time her voice was ever soft of hushed. _Our extraordinary baby girl._

I wasn't originally set to become a ninja. My mother had wanted me to become a masseuse like she used to be before her knuckles became too swollen to work, and Father had planned for me to be married away to some wealthy nobleman and become a doting housewife and bear him healthy grandchildren.

It was only after I met my mother's uncle, Councilman Yurama Mikoto, the great-grandson of Miyuri, that I became interested in the notion of ninjahood. He taught me simple tricks with the kunai, senbon, and shuriken. And then he taught me a little about poisons.

It was that meeting that inspired a change in my career pursuit. My parents were surprised when Mikoto approached them with an offer to train me as a kunoichi and were naturally hesitant to accept, but they did eventually. I was five at the time, and that day was the beginning of the rest of my life.

It became clear after a few months that I would become an good ninja – no, a _great_ ninja. All of it came so easily to me, and it was as if simply by picking up a kunai I was absorbing all the skills, all the muscle memory I needed to use it. And suddenly, our little family was not so average.

We began to gain the recognition of the other council members as my training progressed and my natural ability became more apparent. I was given a Council-assigned sensei, and my parents and I were moved from the outskirts of the compound to the very heart of it, only a few buildings away from the Head Council Building, in an apartment just above the training center.

When I was seven I began official training in the field of poisons, and suddenly all the other things I'd learned didn't matter. With the discovery of a world entirely new to me, I was no longer simply a Yurama. I wasn't bound to my given identity, the plain daughter of a middle-class merchant, and I was free to escape a world of endless creation. I was no longer merely human.

I was a force of nature.


	4. Puppet

**Twelve Seconds  
{Puppet}**

The first time I ever set foot beyond the wrought-iron limits of the Yurama Compound I was eleven. Elven years old and deeply in trouble.

Earlier that afternoon, a man had entered the compound.

This man was unusual for two reasons: Firstly because he was not a Yurama. That he was allowed past the heavily manned gates at all would have been considered abnormal. The Yurama were a suspicious people, protective of themselves and their knowledge; outsiders were rarely permitted to pass into our exclusive, private world. He was also strange because of the way he looked. He had short hair, a curious shade of dark violet, and his eyes were a muddy brown and his skin the color of sand.

I had never before laid eyes on a person who was not Yurama, and I hadn't been expecting to for quite some time. When the strange man rushed past me on the crowded market street I didn't think him to be a person of any significance; amidst the dozens of other people, I could not notice all of his alien features. At the time, he was just another Yurama rushing on his way to work or home or school.

At eleven years old I was impulsive and irrational. I did nearly everything that crossed my mind, regardless even of whether it seemed like a good idea, and without considering the consequences. Whatever discipline or sense of self-preservation my parents and sensei had tried to instill in me over the years had yet to sink in.

It was this recklessness that drove me to act on the notion that had suddenly took root in my brain, an idea like a cloud of smoke that dimmed all other thoughts and sense. I decided in a moment that I would test out a new experiment of mine, a moment I had then falsely perceived as being one of clarity.

This new experiment was a new one of mine, but a variation on several others. It was an injectable, paralysis-causing drug like any other, with only one difference, one new feature: the ability to control where the poison went, which parts of the body it affected, and to what extent that part was paralyzed. If successful, it could potentially prove to be one of the most dangerous and useful tools in my arsenal.

It was a simple enough concept, really. During the stage of concoction, I had combined splices of my own chakra into the poison. When the toxin entered the victim's body, I would, in theory, be able to control it; turn it off and on whenever I pleased. Painfully simple.

And so, with the bright idea of testing this theory, I picked a man from the market crowd at random. And as fate would have it, the man I chose to follow was the stranger with the purple hair. Perhaps it was a subconscious decision; perhaps I'd picked him because I'd noticed that he was a little different, without even realizing it.

I trailed behind him, keeping enough distance between us that he wouldn't take notice of me following him. And maybe it was just enough distance that I still just barely failed to notice that the man was not in fact a Yurama. Or maybe I was just too caught up in my plans.

We came to a particularly busy juncture of the market, near the southern border of the compound, where the farmers and fishermen and merchants were permitted to set up shop for a few brief hours before being ushered out by a squadron of blank-faced guards. I drew closer to the man, weaving between the throngs of people, and slid a vial of clear liquid down my sleeve and into my waiting hand.

I stopped nearly a foot away from him, shutting my eyes for a short moment and steadying myself. And then I was moving with the sea of people, being pushed and pulled around the man in the natural current of the market-goers. In the jostling of the crowd it was all too easy to – accidentally – bump against the man. I slid the needle gently into the exposed flesh of his forearm, pushed down the plunger, and pulled away in one clean, careful stroke.

And then I fell back, toxin administered, to follow him again at a distance. A small, triumphant smile tugged at my pale lips.

We reached a nearly empty region of the compound, the man still blissfully unaware of the foreign substances that circulated his veins. I noticed for the first time just how quickly he moved, as if in a hurry, and I wondered for a moment why. Before long, we turned again into a completely deserted pathway, moving from the shell of the compound towards its innards.

Seeing my chance, I made my move.

My intent was not, of course, to harm the man, or even to cause him any panic. I merely set out to test my product's effectiveness on a _real _subject, something other than a house cat or a field mouse.

I studied him for a few moments from behind a potted plant, watching as he walked a few lengths ahead of me. My eyes danced. I could feel the poison pounding in his veins, could feel it as it crept through his chest and his arms and his fingers and toes. I thought for a moment that the odd, pulse-quickening feeling that surged through me must have been how spies must feel after infiltrating an enemy lair, or the way an assassin feels when preparing for a final strike.

Activating the toxin was like flexing a muscle. I targeted his legs first, watching with rabid interest as he froze mid-step. It was only after he'd let out a small shout of surprise and alarm that I thought to numb his vocal cords and tongue as well, then shrugged and bound his entire body.

I marveled at the way it felt. My brain was like an actual, physical fist, gripped tight around a handful of strings, strings that were attached to this man like the strings of a puppet. My head felt oddly full, in a way I couldn't quite place. Normally my mind was abuzz with the deep vibrato of thoughts that refused to quiet, but this was a different sort of fullness. It was less loud, more complete, less like a sponge and more like a full glass of water.

I moved from my spot a few yards away, circling around to face my test subject. Seeing me, his eyes widened. He opened his mouth to speak – but whether to call for my help or to shout curses at me I would never know, because no sound could leave his stilled mouth.

A small pang of guilt constricted my insides. I could see the trepidation that made his eyes – strange, brown eyes, though I didn't take any special note of it at that moment – shine like glass, the same fear that possessed the rats and mice I sometimes experimented on. It was a fear that came with being trapped, being defenseless and broken. My stomach churned with a new uncertainty.

But the guilt slowly gave way to a gradually broadening smile. I was _doing it._ The poison was working, and the abstract idea of controlling poisons past their injection was working. This experiment would surely change all of my poisons forever; the way they were made, the way the were stored, the way they were used. It could revolutionize the entire _world_ of poisons.

The man before me was completely and utterly still, and entirely at my mercy. A transient thought supposed that this was what a god would feel, every moment of the day. A constant state of being all-powerful, basking in the sensation of _control_.

But then the thought was gone. It was only then that I _really_ looked at him.

That's when I finally noticed, finally_ registered_, all those strange things about him; his colored hair, his wood-toned eyes and caramel skin. He was also rather short, at least compared to the rest of us Yurama, but we were all a little taller than average anyway.

"Please, do not panic," I said softly, still eyeing him curiously. What was a non-Yurama doing in Yurama territory? "I do not mean to hurt you or anything like that."

If he was at all comforted by this declaration I couldn't tell, with him still being frozen. But who was he? Why was he in the compound if he wasn't one of us? What was his business and what were his intentions, and where they honorable?

"You see," I continued, ever more cautious, "I'm testing a project of mine, a simple... paralyzing agent. I won't hurt you while you're like this, if that's what you're afraid of – and I can see that you're afraid. All I want to do is test the effectiveness of my project.

"You... you don't look like everyone else here," I noted casually after a few quiet moments. I began to pull away the strings of chakra-infused poison at his mouth and throat. "You're not a Yurama, are you? I'm going to let you speak for a moment, but you have to promise me you won't shout or anything. If you do I'll have to paralyze you again, okay? All you ave to do is tell me who you are."

With no way of telling whether he would abide by my rules, I released his tongue and vocal cords from my hold and nodded to him. He cleared his throat hesitantly, then spoke.

"I – I'm a messenger. From the Hokage," he stated, his voice heavy with a thick rasp.

"Don't they usually use ANBU for messengers?" I asked suspiciously, my mind twitching around the reins of the poison. "Or messenger hawks?"

"The Yurama Head Council stated that they did not trust elite masked ninja entering their clan under the 'guise of delivering messages' so they sent me instead."

My eyes narrowed.

He'd used quotation marks, bending his two forefingers around the air. The toxin was wearing off. I could feel it slipping from his bloodstream, like a defeated battallion slipping from the battlefield. Disappointment flooded through me. He must have noticed the weakening as well, because he grew a little more relaxed.

"Oh," I hummed, nodding in understanding. That _did_ sound like something my clan would do, given their suspicions of everything not Yurama.

"I'm going to let you go now," I said cautiously, hands open-palmed by my head in a sign of surrender. "I need you to tell me how you feel after, if you feel any sort of side effects. There won't be anything drastic, don't worry, just something like tingling, a little bit of soreness or stiffness, stuff like that. Alright?"

He nodded. I released him completely, and it was like dropping something I'd been holding in my hand. One moment it was something tangible, something I could grip with my mind, and in the next moment it was transparent, floating just beyond my reach. The toxin would fade from his bloodstream gradually, and he would eventually let it out in his urine, but the traces of my chakra within it were beginning to grow too weak to grab onto.

He moved slowly for a moment, as if letting himself get used to being able to move freely again. I watched at he adjusted to the change, taking in his every movement with wide eyes, a mother watching her child take its first steps. I couldn't see any difficulty in his movements, and he didn't shift as if he was in pain. A little smile hitched at the corner of my lips.

"So how do you –"

He was behind me before I even realized he'd moved.

In a flash, one large hand was engulfing both my wrists, pressing them up into the back of my neck. The other arm was around my throat, his forearm hard into my trachea. He drove his knee into the small of my back and forced me onto my knees, releasing my neck but pressing my head painfully down to stare at the ground.

"You have made me late in delivering my messages," he said sternly, his gruff voice sounding from somewhere above me, "and you have purposely assaulted a personal servant of the Sandaime Hokage. You will be coming with me to explain my tardiness to both the Head Council _and_ the Hokage."

With that, he pulled my hands behind my back, fixing them together with bindings of blue-glowing chakra, and hauled me to my feet. I made no move to fight him, my mind focusing instead on his final words.

"The Hokage? What do you mean, you're taking me to the Hokage? To meet him?" I asked eagerly, bobbing next to him as he led me through the compound with a rough hand on my shoulder.

"Yes, to meet him," he sighed, sounding exasperated. I couldn't quite tell if he'd rolled his eyes or not.

"You sound tired," I noted, studying his face closely. Could it be a side effect of the drug? "Were you tired before? Before the paralysis, I mean. And has your voice always sounded raspy like that?"

"_Yes_, I'm tired. And I have a headache, but I don't think it's because of your _poison_." He shot a pointed look at me, and I smiled a little sheepishly.

"And your voice?"

"Same as ever."

"I suppose that's a good thing, isn't it?" I murmured, stumbling as we rounded a corner. "Too bad it faded so quickly. It's not very long-lasting, is it? Well, maybe if I –"

"Look kid," the purple-haired man cut in, stopping for a moment and fixing me with a hard look. "I don't really give a damn about your drug or whatever it is you pumped me full of. The point is that we can't have little kids running around with potentially lethal weapons and attacking civilians with it at random. You understand, right?"

"Little kid?" I sputtered, outrage flooding my veins.

"Yeah, now let's get _moving_."

He shoved me forward, my face red with anger. _Kid?_ I was no _child_. A child couldn't be left alone in a room full of fuming acids and open flames. A child couldn't be trusted around knives and daggers and swords. A child could not kill a person from one hundred meters away, with nothing but a blow dart capped with her own personal poison.

I was not merely a child. I hadn't been for nearly five years.

* * *

The Head Council Building was made up of three levels.

The bottom level was the court itself, where the public meetings and court sessions took place. The top level was made up of the private offices of each of the Council members. And the middle level was Council Hall, where they had private meetings to discuss what couldn't be discussed before the public.

Inside the Hall there was only one desk, a large oak semicircle that opened facing the entrance. Around the table sat seven robed men and women: the Councilmen. My great-uncle, Mikoto, sat directly left of the center-most seat. His eyes seem to burn holes in me as I stood before him in shame.

"I assume you are the messenger," Councilman Toshio rumbled, eyes fixed on the purple-haired man, who bowed deeply.

"Yes, sir. I am Naruki Seiji, a personal messenger of the Sandaime Hokage," he stated, bowing again before stepping forward to place a sealed scroll on the oak table, then retreating with another bow.

"And you have brought Reiki here with you because..." Toshio trailed off, his gaze never leaving the messenger. I almost grinned at the nervous way Seiji swallowed before answering. Toshio tended to have that affect on people.

Yurama Toshio was one of the oldest members of the Council, and had earned his place at the age of nineteen. He'd served as the clan's ambassador to Konoha, as well as several of the other surrounding villages. He was able to quiet a room in a matter of moments, just by opening his mouth to speak in the deep, tremulous way of his. He was likely the most influential member of the Yurama Clan.

"This, uh, girl followed me and injected me with a drug that paralyzed me, causing me to be late in delivering this message. This is a public attack on a servant of the Sandaime Hokage."

"A public attack? Yes, I suppose it was," Toshio let the words hang in the air a few moments, as if to let the room fully digest them. "Well, if your message has been delivered... Councilman Yasuo, if you would escort the messenger to the door..."

"Pardon, sir!" Seiji blurted, bowing deeply again in apology and looking first to Toshio, then to me. "I must request to take... Reiki-san to the Sandaime Hokage as a result of her actions against me."

"I will see to it that she and Hokage have their meeting. You may go."

With a final, tense bow and a blank stare tossed my way, Naruki Seiji made his way out of the Council Building with an air of disgruntled anger. I almost laughed, thinking that it must have been his first encounter with the illustrious Yurama Clan.

But the chuckle died in my throat as I realized he'd left me alone with the seven stern-faced Councilmen, all of whom glowered down at me, unamused.

* * *

"Your actions were reckless, Reiki," my great-uncle sighed as we passed through the gates of the compound. "I have told you all too many times that you must weigh your decisions carefully before you elect to act on them."

His wisdom was lost on me the way my gaze was lost in the sea of people that bustled about beyond the limits of the Yurama Clan Compound. Everyone was so...

Different.

No one had exactly the same hair color; there were yellows and oranges and reds and browns. They differed in skin tone, in eye color, in clothing and in the way that they carried themselves. Some of them spoke loudly, others meekly, and they all danced around each other, none of them noticing just how very different they all looked from one another.

It was incredible.

My head began to swim with all the colors around me. How could so many people be so many different shades and tones and hues? How could they all coexist, how could they all _function_ in the chaos that was created by the meshing of their differences?

I was torn between amazement and horror. A part of me longed to fling myself into that crowd of strangers, mingle with the aliens and learn their names and their voices and the sounds of their laughter. But the rest of me ached to be back behind the gates of the compound, to return to the security of the straitlaced Yurama Clan.

My eyes turned to my great-uncle. I took in his hair, long and black, with streaks of white and gray and silver; his skin, white as parchment and just as smooth; his eyes, clear and colorless as water; his kimono, white with black piping and adorned with the dark silhouettes of falling leaves.

Until that day, I had never seen anyone who had looked anything different than my great-uncle, for every Yurama looked the same. Up until that hour, I had never seen anyone exist beyond black and white.

"I apologize," I said, looking up at him with eyes that were identical to his. I wondered if he could see the great confusion and the great awe that warred in my head, and I wondered if he himself felt the same confusion and awe whenever he left the compound. If he did see the emotions that ran rampant in my brain, he didn't show it; he only nodded brusquely before leading me onward, into the heart of the village.

* * *

_A/N: And so the adventure begins (: _

_If you've got any questions, feel free to drop me a line.  
Reviews are appreciated._

_**I'm also uncertain about the pairing.  
It was originally Sasuke/OC, but I'm willing to take requests.  
If you've got any ideas, leave them for me in the comments.**  
_


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